To Tony Schumacher, words matter.

He uses a lot of them, the talkative seven-time NHRA Top Fuel champion. But each one of them has a special significance, just like each one of the 72 Wally trophies that decorate his home in the Chicago suburb of Long Grove.

Take, for instance, the word “problem.” In Tony Schumacher’s fantasy dictionary, it wouldn’t even be in there. He would leaf through the pages and jump straight from “probity” to “pro bono.” The word “problem” simply wouldn’t exist.

 
To Tony Schumacher, words matter.

He uses a lot of them, the talkative seven-time NHRA Top Fuel champion. But each one of them has a special significance, just like each one of the 72 Wally trophies that decorate his home in the Chicago suburb of Long Grove.

Take, for instance, the word “problem.” In Tony Schumacher’s fantasy dictionary, it wouldn’t even be in there. He would leaf through the pages and jump straight from “probity” to “pro bono.” The word “problem” simply wouldn’t exist.

Said the U.S. Army Dragster driver, “When I do my speeches, I talk about eliminating the word ‘problem.’ We don’t have a ‘problem.’ We have a ‘situation.’ A situation is when you don’t have the right people handling it. A ‘problem’ is jumping out of an airplane and forgetting to put a parachute on. Now you’ve got a problem.

“A situation is when you’re struggling but you’ve got capable men behind you, capable of doing their jobs and rebounding. We’ve always been great at that,” Schumacher said of his Army Dragster team. “We’ve come from the biggest deficit in the world. We’ve won championships many, many times. Some of the guys have been with me; some of the guys are fighting against me right now. But we all know how to do this. We all know how you don’t give up. This is a very difficult sport. Stick with what you know: Work together. Work hard. Dig deep. And go out and win a championship.”

Schumacher has two other “P” words that he likes to keep tucked in his pocket for constant reference: “perspective” and “priority.” Those he relies on to keep him from fretting during times when he isn’t the top dog in the Top Fuel class. They’re why he said it’s not hard emotionally: “not at all, not even for a second.”

He said, “I’ve got three beautiful kids at home and a beautiful wife. My life is fantastic.

“Winning? This is my job. I’m great at it. I understand that we have a great team. We’re good at doing all this stuff. But, man, we don’t win everything. I’m looking around here right now,” Schumacher said, glancing around the pits at Jupiter, Fla., during preseason testing, “and there are 10 good teams in front of me. I can’t be foolish and think we’re going to go out and dominate every day and that those guys aren’t trying and that they’re not good enough to win – because they ARE. There a lot of cars that are incredible now.

“To be on top,” he said, “you have to understand that the monsters who are racing against you are great at their jobs. You’ve got to figure out how to beat ’em. And it’s not going to happen every year. But you do not give up.”

“Rebounding” – that’s just another word Schumacher has thought about.

“Life’s all about being able to rebound,” he said. “Look, man, things don’t come easy. Things come from hard work. You can’t be No. 1 all the time. You’ve got to go out and try things and step out of the boundaries and out of your comfort zone to go faster.

“We did that,” he said of his Mike Green-engineered team that includes Assistant Crew Chief Neal Strausbaugh. “We did what we needed to do to get ahead. It took a little bit longer than usual, but we’re getting there now. And I think when we ultimately reach our goals, we’re going to be back on top.”

That’s the same scenario that brought Alan Johnson, Schumacher’s former tuning shaman, back to championship form from a bleak season two years ago with a tinkering Al-Anabi Racing team. And it’s the scenario that has shoved Schumacher to the front time and again.

“We are an adversity team,” Schumacher said, crediting a large part of that to his marketing partner for the past 14 years: the U.S. Army. “The Army’s great at it. The lessons we’ve learned through all the soldiers we’ve met make it very easy on us. None of those guys walked into an easy situation.”

He traced the issues of the 2013 season, one in which his performance would have appeared to net him a much better finish than seventh in the final standings. Schumacher won three times (at Phoenix, the spring race at Las Vegas, and Chicago) in six finals. He led the standings on four different occasions for a total of eight races, one-third of the season. He was safely above .500 (33-21) in elimination rounds. He started the season by qualifying No. 1 at the Winternationals. He had the class’ second-best speed average (322.32 mph), third-best elapsed-time average (3.817 seconds), and fourth-best reaction-time average (.063 seconds).

But he steadily dropped from title contention in the Countdown, slipping from third to fifth to sixth to seventh.

“I still enjoy it. I still enjoy getting through it,” Schumacher said. “Last year’s a great example. We had a winning car. We were in the lead in Chicago. We just couldn’t continue on the path, blowing up as much as we were.”

His victory on his hometown track over fellow finalist Clay Millican came at a stiff price. His car detonated at the finish line, sending shrapnel in every direction. But the team’s extra-serious work began the second he got that winning car stopped. That was his last time in the lead and the last victory of the season. But Schumacher would say it marked the beginning of his next rebound.

“We were out winning races, in the points lead, but in a dangerous spot where a driver’s going to get hurt or fan’s going to get hurt. We had to make the changes. We made ’em, and we’re getting back to where we know how the car’s going to run on the racetrack,” he said.

“Now, at the end of the year, we were coming on. We got it figured out,” Schumacher said, suggesting the changes were continuing through the Florida test session. “We’re making big changes. We’re out here doing what we know how to do. We’re testing.”

He said he did have one wish, that “the track is what we’re used to. This is a difficult track. You’re seeing it by all the cars out there testing. And I don’t want to get fooled. I want it to be a tune-up we’re learning, not a racetrack we’re learning. So we’ll see how it goes. I think we have other teams in our DSR [Don Schumacher Racing] camp doing what we’re doing. So we’ll be able to work together a little more efficiently, a little more effectively.

“I’m comfortable going to Pomona,” Schumacher said. “Got some new guys on my team. I really like working with these guys. And I’m just excited to start.”

He said what energizes him the most about the 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season is “that the last one’s over!” He laughed.

“I don’t want to be in that No. 7 spot but know that any given day we can be a winning car,” he said. “We had a rough go of it last year . . . and just a great team, too good for that. So I’m excited to get started again, get started from a clean slate, let the last season be finished and over. The number seven is a good, lucky number. It’s on the side of the car.”

For Schumacher, that word “seven” is not a badge of shame that shows he didn’t get as many points as champion Shawn Langdon or as many as Antron Brown, Doug Kalitta, Morgan Lucas, Spencer Massey, and Clay Millican. No, he’ll just think of seven as the number of championships he already has earned and how No. 8 will be on his mind all season.

He said he smiles a lot, too: “I smile every day, baby!”

Smiling was something of which he was conscious, especially during posing in the winners circle.

“I was one of the guys on my team who used to say, every time we won a race, ‘Smile for the pictures.’ Guys would joke a little bit and go, ‘Just use something from the archives.’ And I’d say, ‘You know, there’ll come a time when you don’t win every race.’ I always had that perspective. I get it.”

So he recognizes the perfectly normal side of imperfection and said he knows it’s unrealistic to expect perfection. And that has worked for him. This year, with 968 career elimination rounds in Top Fuel on his resume, he’s on course to hit that 1,000 plateau in 2014. And he has won more than two-thirds of the time he has rolled to the starting line.

With those numbers as proof, Schumacher said he’s comfortable not being perfect.

He said, “I look back at all the trophies on the shelf, and they were all meaningful. Every one of them took more digging deep and effort than most people will ever have to put out in their whole lives. So I don’t have a problem at all.”

Maybe Schumacher likes the word “pragmatic.” Maybe he likes “grounded.” Maybe he likes “motivation” or “competition.” It’s clear one of his favorites is “champion.”

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